


she rings like a bell through the night (and wouldn't you love to love her?)

by lesbinej



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: (@freshtwinkies on tumblr and @twinkiesdraws on instagram), Anyways, Blood and Gore, Bugs & Insects, F/F, Gen, Mild Blood, Not Canon Compliant, Short One Shot, Spoilers, also, and im obsessed, beau is sexy, because i am simply picking and choosing what is canon and what is not, idk im not there i just know it happens, its THERE, like tw for cads beetles, me ignoring the fact that caleb and jester cast polymorph 26 times a fight, oh i describe jester as doggish because i ran w @freshtwinkies' design of her, post-whatever episode yasha gets her wings, probably, some of it is that i genuinely dont know and some of it is i pretend i do not see it, this is mostly beauyasha but like the beauyester is there okay, yasha is also sexy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-11
Updated: 2020-08-11
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:41:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25843741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lesbinej/pseuds/lesbinej
Summary: the gang fights a giant bird. that's really ittitle rhiannon/ fleetwood mac
Relationships: Beauregard Lionett/Yasha, Jester Lavorre/Beauregard Lionett/Yasha
Comments: 3
Kudos: 59





	she rings like a bell through the night (and wouldn't you love to love her?)

Soft, sweet-smelling grass tickles the soles of Beau’s feet as she takes in the humid breeze, closing her eyes and letting the warmth of the evening sun soak into her. She takes it in, slow and savoring. One deep breath, two, two and a half before opening her eyes again, having found her steely center of mind. 

Dairon’s sharp eyes meet hers once more. “Slowing down?”

“You wish,” Beau says before lunging in with her staff once again, meeting the elf’s own midair with a resounding  _ crack,  _ and just like that, she’s off her balance again, as Dairon brings a knee to Beau’s hip, sending tingling numbness down that leg and taking her down swiftly. 

“You have a lot to learn, still.” Dairon sounds disapproving, or maybe it’s Beau taking everything that isn’t the highest praise as the worst criticism. 

She takes in a breath and grabs the staff Dairon is holding to her chin, pulling her weight to sweep Dairon’s feet away. Her sparring partner sees it coming, and ducks out of the way, but not before Beau finishes the movement and lands back on her feet, catlike and agile, ready for another round. 

They’re just two brown and blue whirls of motion, then, fists and knees and elbows as the staves lay in the grass, discarded and forgotten. Sweat is starting to build on Beau’s palms, brows, on her arms and legs, glistening with the exertion of working herself so thoroughly as Dairon drills her, but it’s much less one-sided than it used to be. Their first fight was as a mentor striking down an arrogant student, but this is a match of equals.  _ Or at least, _ Beau thinks as she once again let herself get tunnel vision, and finds herself on her back,  _ it feels a lot closer to it.  _

She blinks, and the purple-reds of the twilight sky are gone, and instead she sees the faint blues and yellows of the ass-crack of dawn⏤a plump, decorated, blue hand rouses her by the shoulder. 

“ _ Beau,”  _ Jester half-shouts, exaggerating it the way she does, so that it sounds like  _ Bo-wuh.  _ “There’s a huge fucking  _ bird  _ and Yasha thinks it’s going to come kill us so she ran to go fight it but I don’t⏤”

“A bird?” Beau says, groggy, just before she hears the racuous  _ skraaaaawww  _ of what must be a  _ huge  _ fucking bird. 

She blinks once, twice, and manages to focus her disadvantaged human eyes on some motion in the far treeline just as Jester points in that direction. 

“That’s where Yasha went!”

“Yasha went where?” Caduceus asks, previously asleep but just starting to sit up, rubbing one eye and yawning slowly. 

“To fight this big ass bird!” Jester says again, pitched higher and more pleading, and as Beau is standing up, grabbing for her staff somewhere in the dirt next to her, she sees Fjord, Veth, and Caleb all beginning to stir as well, raised by Jester’s alarm. 

Jester looks at Beau helplessly. Beau, torn between running after Yasha and helping Jester roust everyone, shoots Jester a desperate face before spinning on her heel and dashing in the direction of the screeching as fast as she can⏤which is pretty fast, if she does say so herself. 

A yell from behind her from her favorite blue tiefling, and a streak of pink light blasts overhead, colliding into a massive, feathered shape the size of a mountain, maybe, or something like that. A  _ “woo!”  _ behind her as the head turns, and a sharp, long, smooth beak as long as a tree and as big around as a hundred thousand Beaus, the whole bird now glittering with pink radiance as Jester sent a Guiding Bolt. 

_ Thanks, Jes,  _ Beau thinks, still at least a hundred feet away from the thing, but now hearing her companions beginning to roust and make shouts of alarm (a familiar, “Oh, what the  _ fuck _ is that,” from Fjord) and it’s just then that  _ fwoom fwoom,  _ two bolts of fire shoot past Beau as well, one striking the bird in the enormous wing, the other skittering into the woods harmlessly. 

“Way to miss the barn door, jackass!” Beau yells, scanning the area now for Yasha, wondering where the  _ hell  _ she might be in the middle of all this. A German cuss word, a crossbow bolt whizzes past that she barely notices, and…  _ there,  _ Yasha’s form darting around the beak of the beast, her speckled wings reflecting some of the radiance and fire now emanating from the spells their friends had cast, Judge in her hands as Beau watches her take the sword by its grip and carve downwards in an arc, crimson blood splashing everywhere as the bird roars in pain. 

“Yash!” Beau calls, now a little out of breath from sprinting a good several hundred feet. “Down here!” 

Unfortunately, as Yasha’s head turns to acknowledge or possibly call a response to Beau, the bird snaps at her with that razor beak, and Beau hears the cry of pain ringing through her bones, sees the white feathers flapping furiously as the bird, now with the taste of blood on its tongue, begins to lift its wings, and Beau feels her blood turn to ice as the feathers are visible from across her entire field of vision, an ink blot across the sky. 

_ Fwoomph, fwoomph.  _ The bird lifts into the air, the wind from its wings buffeting Beau and taking everything from her just to stay in place. Beau manages to brace her face against the wind, peeking just in time to see Yasha darting sideways, the white speckled wings now splashed with a dark red, but still in the fight. 

Fifteen seconds later, Veth is at one of Beau’s heels, and Fjord at the other, and she hears hollering from Jester still another while away. 

“Where’s Yasha?” Veth asks, but not  _ really  _ asking, mostly peering down her crossbow sights at the massive bird that is now three, four hundred feet in the air and circling. Fjord raises a hand to his eyes, shading them.

“Is it just me, or does that thing look like it’s comin’ back around?”

In fact, it did. And just as Beau is about to agree, the streak of black and white and red and navy blue that was Yasha comes around, and she lands deftly in front of the trio of them, as Jester and Caduceus sprint up. 

Up close, Yasha’s wound looks ghastly⏤a strike across her chest that rendered her armor, crimson pouring out but slowing, a few inches wide but hopefully not that deep. 

“Oh, Yasha!” Jester exclaims, straightening up after doubling over, heaving for breath. “Let me get that for you,” she says, hands already glowing a radiant blue, and before Yasha can protest, touches the wound with both hands, and the healing magic does its work⏤the wound closes, leaving a faint pink scar that still looks angry, but otherwise skin smoothed over. 

“Th-thank you,” Yasha manages, looking pained as she does so. 

“Hey Yash,” Beau cuts in, “⏤Thanks Jes⏤but what the  _ fuck  _ is going on?”

Yasha shrugs, wincing a little bit as the freshly repaired flesh stretches a little with the motion, presumably still tender (at least, Beau has had similar wounds healed before, and knows that it doesn’t feel perfect again right away). “It dove at the camp⏤I don’t know how it saw us, but it did, I guess. Jester scared it away, and I jumped after it while she woke you guys up. Really, it’s⏤”

“A problem that needs to be dealt with,” Fjord says, pointing back up at the sky. “Like,  _ trés pronto.” _

“ _ Ouh,  _ well that’s no good then,” Caleb mutters, finally approaching the rest of the group, significantly less haggard as it appears he took his time walking over here⏤not that his expedition would have helped anyway. Beau glances up and sees the bird still circling, looking for a dive on one of them.

Beau sees Yasha’s wings flex protectively, reaching for her sword⏤sees Fjord summon the falchion with a splash of seawater⏤sees Nott’s nocked bolt  _ fwing  _ out of where she had had it locked onto the target, waiting for any sign of a fight⏤and apparently, that was it. She loses sight of the bolt, but the bird seems unbothered⏤it, having seemingly picked a target, suddenly dives down, and Fjord shouts, “Scatter!”

Beau dives to one side, not looking at where shes going or who she’s with, just leaping away and eating shit as her feet skid into the mud and she tumbles into the ground, and she feels an arm hooking itself around hers, and looks to see Jester pulling her away as the bird pulls itself at the last second, snapping just inches from where Beau’s foot had been. 

“Thanks, Jes,” she pants, and feels another hand on her other shoulder, the bird swooping away and returning to its ascent. Caduceus, staff in the other hand, palm glowing, dispells a familiar sensation through Beau’s bloodstream, her veins, her artieries filling with a magical essence of radiance. 

“Is this the sexy punching spell?”

Caduceus’ face doesn’t change. “Yeah. And here.” He taps the staff on the ground and knocks on it with his other knuckle, the beetles that perpetually live in it swarming out and onto Beau’s body⏤it takes every single muscle in her body not to shriek at the sensation of being enveloped alive by  _ bugs _ ⏤“give them a ride for me, would you?”

“Uh⏤sure, Deucey.” 

Another streak of fire, this one much larger than the first, arcs through the sky and this one does make impact⏤a flash of light, a rain of ash, the distinct smell of burning guano tells Beau that Caleb is bringing the big guns. 

Caduceus gives her a nod and a little push, Jester makes some kind of nervous squeal as Beau goes tearing in the direction of the bird, determined to have some ground turkey for breakfast, sprinting twenty, thirty feet before her feet slow as she realises that the bird is at least a hundred feet in the air now, and she’s pretty sure that she can’t reach that far with her staff.

Crackling purple blasts, three of them, soar over Beau’s head, accompanied by Fjord’s cajoling. Blasts of magic on all sides⏤pink, green, orange, purple⏤rage against the beast in the air, wailing and caterwauling, as it takes a dive again, this time finding purchase in blue flesh, and tearing off with Jester in its claws. 

“Jester!” Beau screams, raw as she runs after it, feeling helpless but not wanting to sit around doing nothing, doing her best to keep up but the thing is  _ fast _ ⏤when Yasha’s huge, aerial form barrels her over, and the barbarian’s arms catch Beau by the knees and back, barely even losing speed with the impact. 

Now, the ground is disappearing underneath Beau’s feet, and she feels a swoop in her belly as she realizes the only thing between her and the forest floor is Yasha and her wings beating furiously to keep up with the huge bird. 

“Fucking bugs,” Yasha mutters, sounding a little strained, and Beau remembers the beetles crawling over her skin⏤honestly, after a good thirty seconds of not actively thinking about them, the crawling sensation had faded to background noise, but now it sends another shiver down her spine. 

“‘Deuces special,” Beau says, squinting now to try and see Jester in the bird’s talons, before she sees her struggling form, writhing in its claws, tails lashing. A flash of white and a scream that could only be Infernal, and Beau sees ice shards spike in every which way around Jester, handaxe in one hand and eyes streaming with glowing white radiance, dripping like tears but just glowing energy instead. The bird falters for a moment, and Yasha takes the moment to dive⏤Beau strikes her palms together to activate the electricity of her gauntlets, waiting for the moment when Yasha looses her onto the beast. 

Not a moment later, Yasha grunts and swoops to one side, straining to keep up with the thing, but Beau feels her arms tense just as she brings Beau back and does a throw-slash-hoist onto the back of the bird⏤though she’s only truly weightless for a moment, Beau still feels a course of terror strong enough to make her wonder when the last time she pissed was. And then it’s rank, musky bird feathers in her mouth, nose mashed into the side of its ribs, and she’s clinging on for dear life.

Faster than anything, faster than her own mind can keep up with, she’s steadied on the bird, found purchase in its muscles and sinew, and blasts away the energy and electricity and everything the Cobalt Soul ever taught her. 

The bird lets a horrible scream, teetering wildly in the air, and Yasha appears on the other side of it, sword out and glittering crimson, as she strikes at its leg, attempting to loosen Jester from its grip. 

Attention focused on Yasha, Beau doesn’t notice the bird lurch to one side, almost fully perpendicular to the ground, until it’s almost too late⏤she grabs frantically for feathers, skin, anything she can reach to keep from plummeting to the earth as the bird begins to circle again around her friends, and another blast of purple strikes the back of the bird just inches from Beau’s nose. 

“Yasha, this might’ve been a  _ really  _ bad idea!” Beau yells, searching now to see if there’s anywhere more secure that she can grab, but all she hears is roaring from the aasimar and growling from Jester as they appear to be working in tandem to free the cleric while Beau’s flightless self clings with the fear of every god and goddess in her heart. 

Another crossbow bolt, another bolt of fire, and then a sickening  _ crack  _ as a glittering purple lollipop, semitranslucent and deceptively delicious-looking, apparates in the air next to Beau and immediately slams downward, surely striking through a bone or two. 

Jester’s grinning visage greets Beau as she, in Yasha’s arms, still holds her hands in the air from the spell and pants a little, her black nose twitching and her mouth open slightly, tongue peeking between her canines. 

“And a Sacred Flame!” Jester shouts giddily, doing another motion with her hands as the radiance of pink flame scatters across the feathers of the bird, causing another shriek to be had, and the permanence of Beau’s air taxi is starting to hang in question. 

“Drop her!” Shouts a shrill, piercing voice that can only belong to Veth. “I’ve got her!”

Yasha looks at Jester, looks down, and then releases her into a free-fall for just a moment before Beau peers and sees Jester’s rotund blue form floating gently to the ground, Veth with arms outstretched and a feather already floating in the air from the spell released. 

Beau looks back to Yasha, who looks to her, and then the two of them go to work. 

Between them and the fireworks of the spells being loosed and the lightning from Beau’s hands, the extra radiance with each strike, Yasha just carving chunks of it loose and sending scarlet rain to the ground below (the beetles having long since disentegrated from the fire and lightning and holy hell being raised), the bird feels beat but hasn’t given up. Frustrated, Beau lets out a growl and leaps into the air, pinging herself off of Yasha’s knee for the extra momentum, and comes back down into the shoulder blade of the beast with a ferocious elbow, driving all the radiance and energy of her own body into the strike,

and the bird isn’t there.

And she’s free falling.

Her stomach turns over.

Arms catch her again, rough and unyielding and the thick coils of black and white hair tickle her nose, feathers and muscle working together as Yasha spins herself out of a pure nosedive, working overtime to keep the both of them into the air, and Beau barely sees the bird finally teeter a final time before falling itself, body sprouting vines and mushrooms and colorful flowers because all she sees is Yasha’s arms and her chest and her hair, tucked in underneath her neck as they fly for a moment away from the beast. 

“Thanks,” Beau breathes, dismissing her  _ Thank you Knowing Mistress thank you Traveler thank you Stormlord fuck it thank you U’kotoa  _ prayer from the back of her throat, adrenaline still demanding from her but no longer directly in danger. 

“Wasn’t going to let you die,” Yasha mumbles, steering them in a much gentler slope towards the ground now, not a direct drill downwards. 

“I mean, you did literally just drop Jester for Veth to catch.”

“That… is true.”

“Not that I’m not grateful.” Yasha’s arms are warm, though slick with sweat and blood. Beau starts to feel the stings of a few scrapes now that the danger is passed. 

A moment of silence passes between them as the only sound is the beating of wings in the air, until Beau feels gravity overtake them once more as Yasha’s feet touch the ground several hundred feet from where they had initially begun fighting the bird, and only flickering firelight visible from the campsite. Yasha drops Beau’s feet to the ground, then her back, and then as Beau is finding her ground legs again (trying not to visibly wobble from motion sickness), almost collapses against her as the transformation of her wings vanishes, the splendor and majesty and awe-inspiring visage gone, leaving Yasha looking sallow and ragged. 

“Whoa, hey,” Beau says, just barely managing to not fall over under Yasha’s sudden weight as the much taller barbarian flops against her, “I got you. You’re okay.”

“Yeah,” Yasha says, breathy and gasping, and Beau feels warm liquid starting to spread against her shoulder, and looks, and sees a pooling collection of sticky, hot blood running from a gash across Yasha’s collarbone, much worse than the intial scrape from before. 

“Oh shit, oh, sh⏤” Beau pulls one of Yasha’s arms around her shoulder, pathetically as it looks since Beau’s head only comes to the bottom of Yasha’s ribcage, but manages to take the brunt of her weight onto herself. “Jessie! Deuces! _ Help _ ?!”

Calls answer her, but not anything close, not close enough. Beau knows, objectively that her friends are far more competent at healing than herself (if she is at all), and, worst comes to worst, they have diamonds for resurrection, but it doesn’t stop the fear at the spreading blood and the ragged breathing of Yasha in her ear. 

“Hey, Hey,” Beau tries, and Yasha blinks a few times, looking conscious but a little out of it, a little dazed. “You’re fine, we’re done, it’s fine, it’s okay.”

“Beau,” Yasha mumbles, her mouth now smushed in Beau’s other shoulder. Beau starts to walk the two of them closer to their camp, slowly but as quickly as she can manage with Yasha’s weight. “Beau…”

“Yeah, Yash?” Now she hears footfalls approaching, come calls of  _ Beau, where are you?  _ as it sounds like Jester and Caleb are searching for them.

“Thank you very much,” Yasha says, rolling her head to the other cheek. “That was very good.”

“Hey, thanks for the ride up. Just hang on for another minute.”

As Beau says that, choking on her emotion for the moment, she spots Jester in the scrub running towards them, Caleb about ten feet behind her with the floating globules of light twinkling around him. Jester darts up quickly and takes Yasha’s weight from Beau, almost effortlessly swinging her into her own arms, similarly to how Yasha had carried Beau in the air. And if Beau is a little jealous that Jester is almost as strong as Yasha herself, well, nobody except her had to know. 

“Oh, Yasha,” Jester says, hands glowing with the healing radiance of a must more powerful spell. “Thank you so much, you were so good and so strong and please stay with me?”

Yasha grunts as the spell gets dispelled, Beau and Caleb watching with breaths held. She blinks, shakes her head a little, and focuses slowly on Beau, then Caleb, then Jester holding her. 

“Um… thank you?”

“Oh, you’re so very welcome, Yasha! Thank you for saving me.”

“Not a problem, just… put me down?”

Jester makes a squeak of surprise and sets Yasha down without issue, and she straightens up for a moment, stretches, and then seems to notice that the three of them still have eyes on her, watching. 

“Oh, um…”

And Veth sprints up, tackling Jester’s legs in a goblinish hug, and Fjord and Caduceus appear as well, slower and more warm and welcoming. 

“Jester, I’m so glad the bird didn’t  _ eat  _ you!” Veth says, and a few small conversations break out that Beau isn’t really a part of and doesn’t pay attention to (except for Caduceus’  _ “okay, everyone, hold on for a few minutes while I get this prayer of healing going,”),  _ just watches as Caleb goes and sits by Caduceus quietly, as Jester and Veth spin in a hug and chatter⏤until she feels a heavier hand on her shoulder, and looks up to see Fjord smiling with one stubby tusk poking out of his lip, and patches of unshaven beard just starting to come in.

“Hey,” Beau croaks, overwhelmed by the energy and fuss at the moment.

“Hey. You did good.” He pats her on the shoulder, just as awkward as Beau feels.

“Yeah. Not too bad.”

“That was some sick ass lightning with the gloves⏤and hitching a ride with Yasha was smart.”

“I⏤didn’t really have a choice, actually,” Beau admits, wishing she could take credit. “Yasha just kind of grabbed me.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, I mean⏤it makes sense, grab the one that has to be up close and personal because I’m fucking useless⏤” and Beau holds up her fists to illustrate her point “⏤on the ground, when it’s literally a giant bird.” 

“Fair enough,” Fjord says, leaning back on one heel. “Still a smart choice, and you ended up doing some damage. Maybe that could be like… a  _ thing.” _

“A  _ thing?”  _

“Yeah… a tactical strategy, if you will.” He emphasizes the words  _ tactical strategy  _ the way he does with his drawl, accent thicker and heavier to show that he’s really putting the focus on it.

“You’re just saying words.” 

“I mean, but it’s actually brilliant. We just airlift you in, drop you, and  _ bam _ ⏤”

“⏤ _ lightning punches!”  _ Beau punches Fjord in the shoulder playfully. “That’s a fucking  _ amazing  _ idea.”

“Of course, it does mean Yasha has to carry you⏤” Fjord looks at her once over with a more foxish grin “⏤but I’m sure that’s not a problem, is it?”

Beau’s giddiness turns quickly to  _ man, fuck you, fuck off,  _ and does her best to give him a glare and a resounding middle finger, to which she’s met with a guffaw and a slap on the back as Fjord walks over to join Yasha and Caleb where they’ve struck up a small conversation.

Beau shakes her head, watching him go. She can’t believe the dumb shit she gets roped into, sometimes. 

**Author's Note:**

> so anyways i love beauyasha follow me @beauyester on twitter for more ty paige @roseticolesbian for hashing this out with me somewhat because i adore the idea of beauyasha airlift strategy!!!


End file.
